Asylum seekers waiting over a year for claim in UK may be allowed to work under new measures
Up to 21,000 asylum seekers who have waited for a year for their claims to be processed could be allowed to enter the jobs market so they can support themselves, the Home Office has said, as part of a package of measures to be announced on Thursday.As the government seeks to empty asylum hotels, claimants who break the law, work illegally or are found to have enough assets to live without support will from June be ejected and lose their support payments.The developments have been questioned by the Refugee Council for risking an increase in rough sleeping among those escaping war and famine.They come as Shabana Mahmood has hit back in a column for the Guardian at demands from senior labour movement figures for ministers to stop focusing on migration and to soften their attacks on the Green party.The home secretary wrote: “Restoring order at our border is not just an embodiment of Labour values, it is the necessary condition for a Labour government to do anything at all.
”Mahmood wrote that Labour’s vision should appeal to the mainstream and be “neither the nightmare of Farage’s borders, effectively closed, nor the Greens’ fairytale of borders effectively open”.She also said the government planned to launch a new “safe and legal” route in the autumn for students seeking refuge.There are about 30,600 people awaiting asylum claims living in roughly 200 hotels across the UK, and 107,000 people receiving asylum support, the Home Office said.At present, those in dispersal accommodation, such as private housing, receive £48 a week, while those in hotels receive £9.95 per person.
Officials are seeking to move on many of the 21,000 people who have been in hotels for more than a year by extending permission to work.If they find work, the intention is that they would fall under the category of having asylum support removed and eventually move out.The statutory legal duty under EU law to provide asylum seekers with support and accommodation would be revoked on Thursday, the Home Office said.Instead, it would be replaced with a conditional approach, so support would be reserved only for those who genuinely needed it and followed the law.The measures, which will be laid in parliament and come into force in June, would remove support payments and accommodation to asylum seekers who illegally work, have the ability to support themselves, have the right to work or have broken the law.
The Home Office did not respond to questions asking if the 21,000 would be restricted to jobs on the “immigration salary list”.Asked on what criteria the Home Office would decide whether an individual has enough assets to survive without financial support, a source said it would be “on a case by case basis” and with no set threshold.Keir Starmer and Mahmood have been facing calls from across the labour movement to move towards progressive policies in the wake of the Green party victory at the Gorton and Denton byelection.Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, wrote in the Guardian: “A political strategy of taking liberal, progressive voters for granted is clearly flawed.”“The vast majority of those who are thinking of voting Green are not extreme,” Khan said.
The latest announcement comes after the home secretary visited Denmark last week to see how it has tackled immigration, bringing asylum claims to a 40-year low.Mahmood is following the Danish model in which the government seeks to make it less attractive for illegal migrants to come to the UK.She will make a speech today at the IPPR thinktank on Thursday outlining how these reforms are in line with her British values.Imran Hussain, the director of external affairs at the Refugee Council, said: “Forcing people into destitution will not fix the system or deter people who have escaped torture or persecution.Instead, it is more likely to push them into sleeping rough, and shift costs on to local authorities and the NHS, making cases harder to resolve.
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Joy of teaching English in the age of AI | Letter
Your long read (Teacher v chatbot: my journey into the classroom in the age of AI, 3 March) provides human insight into both the craft and purpose of English teaching in the era of developing AI expertise in language. There is no doubt that if the article were fed into AI models often enough, the teacher’s words and techniques could, at some level, be replicated by AI online teachers.However, reading and writing, especially that which explores the writer’s thoughts and feelings, are surely uniquely human activities.As the writer comes to recognise, exploring human experiences through the written word is a highly valuable communal experience. Reading literature aloud in the classroom is the gateway to discussing personal responses to the author’s words
Union tries to seize control of works council at Tesla’s German factory
Europe’s largest trade union is trying to gain control of the works council at Elon Musk’s Tesla gigafactory near Berlin, in an industrial relations showdown marked by lawsuits and mutual accusations of slander.The works council, an elected body of employees that negotiates everything from working hours to pay deals with a company’s management, is considered an entrenched aspect of the German corporate world, particularly in the car industry.But it was a bone of contention at the Tesla plant in Grünheide, about 20 miles (30km) south-east of Berlin, even before the gates opened almost four years ago.There have been regular clashes at the plant – which employs about 10,000 workers and is the US electric carmaker’s only production site in Europe – between the turbo-capitalist approach of Tesla’s management and Germany’s tradition of a social market economy, which relies on worker representation and collective bargaining.Voting in elections to the works council, which is now controlled by non-trade union members, began on Monday and will close on Wednesday
Europe’s next-generation fighter jet project may collapse if row continues, says warplane maker
France and Germany’s next-generation fighter jet project could soon be “dead”, one of the two companies tasked with delivering it has warned, amid a worsening corporate rift over who gets to build the aircraft.Dassault Aviation, France’s leading warplane maker, said Airbus’s defence arm – which represents Germany and Spain – needed to cooperate on the €100bn programme otherwise it would collapse.“Airbus doesn’t want to work with Dassault, full stop. I take note. I never said I didn’t want to work with Airbus or with the Germans,” said Éric Trappier, Dassault’s chief executive, via an interpreter while presenting the company’s financial results on Wednesday
Google faces lawsuit after Gemini chatbot allegedly instructed man to kill himself
Last August, Jonathan Gavalas became entirely consumed with his Google Gemini chatbot. The 36-year-old Florida resident had started casually using the artificial intelligence tool earlier that month to help with writing and shopping. Then Google introduced its Gemini Live AI assistant, which included voice-based chats that had the capability to detect people’s emotions and respond in a more human-like way.“Holy shit, this is kind of creepy,” Gavalas told the chatbot the night the feature debuted, according to court documents. “You’re way too real
X to ban users from earning revenue if they post unlabelled AI-generated war videos
Elon Musk’s X will ban users from making money on the platform if they repeatedly post unlabelled AI-generated war videos, after social media feeds were flooded with fake battle scenes from the Iran conflict.The social media platform, which has about half a billion monthly active users, will suspend people from earning revenue from posts for 90 days if they put up AI-generated videos of an armed conflict without adding a disclosure that it was made with AI. A second infraction wouldlead to a permanent ban, it said on Tuesday night, after the first days of the conflict in Iran were marked by a torrent of bogus online footage.Timelines on X, as well as Instagram and Facebook, which are run by Meta, have carried numerous faked battle scenes, including Iranian rockets pursuing and shooting down a US jet – which was viewed 70m times, according to checks by BBC Verify – and another clip that used AI to replace smoke rising from the site of a real missile strike with a fake fireball several times bigger.Users can make hundreds of dollars a month on X as part of the platform’s advertising model if they build substantial followings approaching 100,000 people, which incentivises the production of shocking viral posts
Nvidia and UK Wealth Fund invest in British autonomous driving startup Oxa
Nvidia is investing in the British autonomous driving startup Oxa, alongside backing from the UK’s National Wealth Fund, in a boost to the country’s technology sector.The Oxford-based company, which has developed software for self-driving industrial vehicles, said it had raised $103m (£77m) from investors to focus on commercial solutions for that software, as well as its physical AI and robotics technology, and to push on with its global expansion plans.The fundraising includes $50m from the National Wealth Fund, owned by the Treasury, and backing from the US tech company Nvidia’s venture capital arm, NVentures.Founded in 2014, Oxa now focuses on the automation of repetitive industrial driving tasks, such as the towing and carrying of goods in ports, airports and factories.The latest investor round also includes capital from existing shareholders the London-listed IP Group, which invests in British tech companies, the Australian superannuation (pension) fund Hostplus and BP Ventures, the UK oil company’s arm that backs innovative technologies
Asylum seekers waiting over a year for claim in UK may be allowed to work under new measures
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